Hashtags a start against corruption

In social justice, Twitter hashtags have united us. It has happened with #Ferguson and #MikeBrown. It has happened with #EricGarner and #WeCantBreathe.

And it has happened with #Iguala, the now-infamous town in the Mexican state of Guerrero, where a bloody massacre suspected to be at the hands of politicians, police and drug traffickers took the lives of 43 aspiring teachers Sept. 26.

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Massive demonstrations have erupted in Mexico. So have smaller ones around the world, including in San Antonio.

The case of the students from the rural town of Ayotzinapa might seem isolated, another story about the violent war on drugs. But it’s not, said Trinity University political scientist Katsuo Nishikawa, a Mexican national and expert on Mexico and Latin America.

“This type of collusion has never been seen in Mexico,” he said. “To my knowledge, this is the first time cartels have operated on behalf of the political system.” In short, it was not about money and organized crime.

Instead, Iguala reminds him of Colombia in the 1980s and ’90s, that country’s darkest time, when drug lord Pablo Escobar assassinated a presidential candidate and paramilitary forces used violence for political means, he said.

Don’t focus on Iguala’s mayor and his wife, linked to the Guerreros Unidos cartel suspected of carrying out the massacre, he adds. They are only symptoms.

What’s more compelling is the cancer — “this vast relationship” between the political system, police and cartels, Nishikawa said.

Political parties, the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, and left-center Democratic Revolutionary Party, or PRD, both “look the other way,” he says, because cartel money has replaced state resources in buying elections and, thus, power.

“The cartels are part of the political machine,” Nishikawa said, as in Iguala, where the Guerreros Unidos cartel “worked” for Iguala’s PRD government.

That’s really why protests are happening in Mexico.

But the social justice movement has to become a political movement that operates between presidential elections, he said. (Sound familiar?)

In spite of the violence against journalists, the movement requires fair media coverage. Nishikawa is especially critical of giant Televisa, “the media machine and best friend of authoritarian Mexico,” he calls it.

The movement also requires more than the usual protesters — students, unionists, artists. That means Mexico’s small but important middle class. It means businesses.

Nishikawa said, “We have to put fear into the minds of politicians that bad governance equals losing your job.”

“I hope out of these protests, we see a more vibrant civil society,” he says. “That’s the solution. These guys on social media, they’ve got to close that laptop and get to the streets. They have to invade real space.”

In cyberspace, they already have stood with Mexican performers singing a #GritoDeGuerra (battle cry) #PorUnMexicoEnPaz (for a peaceful Mexico) because #TodosSomosAyotzinapa (we are all Ayotzinapa), because #YaMeCanse (we’ve had enough).